Katie Holmes (2) (1962–)

A fine analysis of Australian women’s lives, as revealed in the diaries they kept during the 1920s and 1930s.

Katie Holmes uses diaries to understand how women created lives of order and made their own spaces. The conceptual tools she creates are ones that could be useful to anyone analyzing women anywhere in any time period. Women’s life cycles form the major organization of the book. Within each period, Holmes focuses on a small handful of diaries allowing readers to get to know each show more woman and her situation and to see her concepts active in actual practice. The diaries Holmes chooses are from a wide variety of women, each with her own distinctive style and interests.

I highly recommend this book as a pleasure reading experience and as a model for how to analyze women’s lives. show less

Reading the Garden was first published in 2008, but somehow I missed it and only discovered it when Emma Ashmere, author of The Floating Garden revealed in Meet an Aussie Author that she had been a researcher for the book. I tracked it down at my local library that day and reserved it. I have been fascinated by the history of gardening in Australia ever since I read Holly Kerr-Forsyth’s Remembered Gardens.

Alas, Reading the Garden turned out to be a disappointment, nothing to do with show more Emma’s research but rather everything to do with the use that’s been made of it.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2017/01/05/reading-the-garden-the-settlement-of-austral... show less